There's a new marketplace exclusively for buying women’s sports media

Wake up, babe. New media marketplace just dropped.

Fan intelligence company Sports Innovation Lab has teamed up with media agency Trailblazing Sports Group to create the Trailblazing Marketplace, which gives media buyers access to women’s sports inventory across sports and platforms. The marketplace was announced Thursday during Sports Innovation Lab’s Women’s Sports Club NewFront, which the company describes as “the first NewFront dedicated entirely to women’s sports.”

“Women’s sports does not have a supply problem,” Sara Gotfredson, founder of Trailblazing Sports Group, said during the presentation. “What we have is opportunity.”

The marketplace is designed to provide buyers with opportunities to achieve scale and target specific audiences to maximize campaign performance, Sports Innovation Lab CMO Gina Waldhorn said on stage, and it comes as more brands look to incorporate women athletes, teams, and leagues into their marketing.

Scaling: While certain women’s sports events like the World Cup or March Madness draw massive crowds by any standard, Waldhorn said that fans are looking for content beyond those tentpole moments, and “brands need to hold on to that connection with their consumers in between.”

To “keep advertisers always-on in women’s sports” and increase the reach of their campaigns, Waldhorn said, the marketplace will allow brands to buy packages of media that can include cross-channel content from publishers like The Athletic, media companies like Re—Inc, deals with athletes, and sponsorships of leagues like the World Surf League and events like the X Games.

“We love the WNBA, we are here for the NWSL, they are riding a wave, but there’s other sports, too,” Waldhorn said. “Especially Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they are leaning into volleyball…they want to surf, they want to skate, they want to pickleball. They want it all. ”

Bundling: The inventory is sorted based on three categories: culture-driven, athlete-driven, and community-driven.

• The culture-driven category includes inventory like a docuseries from sports media and commerce company Togethxr, social content from Bleacher Report, The Athletic’s women’s sports podcast, WNBA and NWSL halftime shows on Scripps Sports, and league and event sponsorships.
• In the athlete-driven category, brands can coordinate deals with individuals or groups of athletes.
• The community-driven category is focused on local and grassroots efforts, Waldhorn said, such as targeting specific markets via regional sports networks or local broadcasts.

Targeting: The marketplace is also aimed at improving performance and ROI in the women’s sports media space, Waldhorn said. Buyers using the marketplace can target based on Sports Innovation Lab’s sports-specific addressable audiences that incorporate data about what athletes, teams, and leagues fans follow, where they consume sports content, and their purchasing habits. The audiences include fans of the Olympics, sports bettors, athleisure purchasers, fans of women’s college sports, fans of emerging sports, women’s soccer fans, and Gen Z sports fans.

“This kind of data has actually been missing from the entire sports industry,” Waldhorn said. “If we’re going to bring it anywhere, we’re going to bring it to women’s sports first. Why? Because for too long, women’s sports have been sold based on pulling on your heartstrings, because it’s the right thing to do. We want to pull on the purse strings.”